DDT – Death Denying ‘Toxin’?
It just may help
DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, is a pesticide that is subject of a huge public health debate. DDT was used as an insecticide in increasingly large volumes until in the 1960s when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring released information about the impact of DDT on our healths despite the effectiveness in agricultural spraying. It was subsequently banned. With the ban of DDT, dealing with malaria and other related epidemics relied very much on drugs used to treat those afflicted or the use of safer but very much weaker insecticides.
The issue about removing the ban on DDT keeps surfacing, but it probably takes on a new urgency. According to Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) in an online article, artemisinin, a very effective drug against malaria, is losing its effectiveness. The issue about fighting vector-borne epidemics like that of the malaria is that resistance towards the drug or insecticide used will almost always develop eventually with increasing use of the substance. Considering that DDT might be carcinogenic, and assuming DDT resistance develops in mosquitoes eventually, it might be pointless to use DDT.
Still, the unique quality of DDT is its ability to repel mosquitoes even if they are resistant to it. In addition, the number of lives lost to malaria would probably greatly outnumber that endangered by the use of DDT, especially if DDT is used in minute controlled quantities and not like in the USA before the ban when it was sprayed in huge amounts on crops.
The African American Environmentalist Association advocates for the removal of the ban on DDT, and I can't help but agree. As long as there is controlled release of DDT, the advantages of spraying greatly outnumber the disadvantages brought about from DDT.
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September 28th, 2009 - 00:08
Very counterintuitive given all the education we’ve been given on the harms of DDT. Guess we have to weigh cost and benefits after all!
September 28th, 2009 - 05:00
If we weight the costs and benefits, we note that there are cheaper and more effective things to use than DDT sprayed in broadcast fashion outdoors, as the AAEA advocates. In fact, broadcast spraying is advocated by no expert in fighting malaria.
Bednets are cheaper and more effective.
Among other problems, DDT breeds resistance in mosquitoes — which is why use of DDT against malaria was stopped in Africa in 1965, seven years before the U.S. banned the spraying of DDT on cotton.
In any case, it’s pure silliness — and maybe inability to read a calendar and a map — to say that the 1972 ban on spraying DDT on cotton in Texas, caused the cessation of spraying of DDT in Africa in 1965, or that the cessation of spraying DDT in Texas caused an increase in malaria in Africa.
September 29th, 2009 - 06:23
I guess the key here is ‘controlled’ application but I do agree that bednets have been used with greater effectiveness except it doesn’t work unless you’re sleeping inside it.